The first attempts at plant cultivation are believed to have been made shortly before 10,000 BC in Western Asia (Morton, 1981)[1] and the first references to algae are to be found in early Chinese literature.
The first coralline algae to be recognized as living organisms were probably Corallina, by Pliny the Elder in the 1st century AD (Irvine and Chamberlain, 1994 p. 11).
Written accounts of the algae of South Africa were made by the Portuguese explorers of the 15th and 16th centuries; however, it is not clear to which species they refer.
(Huisman, 2000 p. 7)[2] In the 17th century, there was a great awakening of scientific interest all over Europe, and after the invention of the printing-press books on botany were published.
Among them was the work of John Ray, [1] who wrote in 1660: Catalogus Plantarum circa Cantabrigiam., this initiated a new era in the study of Botany (Smith, 1975 p. 4).
[7] Ray "influenced both the theory and the practice of botany more decisively than any other single person in the latter half of the seventeenth century" (Morton, 1981).
His unsystematic glimpses of plant structure, reported to the Royal Society between 1678 and his death in 1723, produced no significant advances (Morton, 1981 p. 180).
[1] As adventurers explored the world, more species of all animals and plants were discovered; this demanded efforts to bring order out of this quickly accumulating knowledge.
He divided the Cryptogamia into four orders: Filices (ferns), Musci (mosses), Algae (including lichens and liverworts), and fungi (Smith, 1955 p. 1).
de Réaumur gave an account of Fucus in which he noted the two types of external openings in the thallus: the non-sexual cryptostromata (sterile surface cavities) and the conceptacles (fertile cavities, immersed but with a surface opening) containing the sexual organs, which he thought were female flowers.
[12][13] The first scientific species description of a South African seaweed accepted for most nomenclatural purposes is that of Ecklonia maxima, published in 1757 as Fucus maximus (Stegenga et al., 1997).
[15] Archibald Menzies (1754–1842) was the appointed botanist on the expedition led by Captain George Vancouver in the ships Discovery and Chatham of 1791–1795 to the Pacific coast of North America and south-western Australia.
He traveled widely in Europe, visiting Germany, Poland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Italy, and was the first to emphasize the importance of the reproductive characters of algae and use them to distinguish the different genera and families.
His son, Jacob Georg Agardh (1813–1901), who became Professor of Botany at Lund in 1839, made a study of the life-histories of algae, described many new genera and species.
It was R. Philippi who, in 1837, published his paper in which he finally recognized that coralline algae were not animals and he proposed the generic names Lithophyllum and Lithothamnion (Irvine and Chamberlain, 1994 p. 11).
[21] Specimens of Anne E. Ball (1808–1872) have been found in both the Herbarium of the Irish National Botanic Gardens, Dublin [2] and the Ulster Museum (BEL).
[22] William Henry Harvey (1811–1866), Keeper of the Herbarium and professor in botany at Trinity College, Dublin, was one of the most distinguished algologists of his time (Papenfuss, 1976 p. 26).
[25] Many of the collectors of this period sent, and exchanged, specimens freely one to another; as a result, Harvey's books show a remarkable knowledge of the distribution of algae elsewhere in the world.
Sir William Jackson Hooker (1785–1865) was a lifelong friend of Harvey (Papenfuss, 1976 p. 26); he was appointed Professor of Botany at Glasgow University in 1820 and became director in Kew 1841–1865.
Hooker recognized the talent in Harvey and lent him books, and encouraged and invited him to write the section on algae in his British Flora.
[15] Edward Morell Holmes (1843–1930), was an expert on seaweeds, mosses, liverworts and lichens, specimens were sent to him from all over the British Isles, as well as from Norway, Sweden, Florida, Tasmania, France, Cape of Good Hope, Ceylon and Australia.
Farlow, mentioned above, who was appointed in 1879, Professor of Cryptogamic Botany at University of Harvard (U.S.) in 1879 and published, among other works, the Marine algae of New England and Adjacent Coasts.
; in 1876, John Erhard Areschoug, a Swedish Professor of Botany at Uppsala University, reported on some brown algae collected in California by Gustavus A. Eisen (Papenfuss.
[15] George W. Traill (1836–1897) was a clerk in the Standard Life Company in Edinburgh where he worked long hours, yet he was one of the greatest authorities on Scottish algae.
[13] It was in the 19th century that the true nature of lichens, as organisms consisting of an alga and a fungus in specific association, was demonstrated by Schwendener in 1867.
In 2003, A Check-list and Atlas of the Seaweeds of Britain and Ireland was published by Gavin Hardy and Michael Guiry with a revised edition in 2006.
First efforts had been made by interested biologists and people capable of identifying the algae; this required books using the botanical names.
[41] The Rhodophyta are now arranged in the Orders: Porphyridiales, Goniotrichales, Erythropeltidales, Bangiales, Acrochaetiales, Colaconematales, Palmariales, Ahnfeltiales, Nemaliales, Gelidiales, Gracilariales, Bonnemaisoniales, Cryptonemiales, Hildenbrandiales, Corallinales, Gigartinales, Plocamiales, Rhodymeniales and Ceramiales.
The Chlorophyta are arranged in the Orders: Chlorococcales, Microsporales, Chaetophorales, Phaeophilales, Ulvales, Prasiolales, Acrosiphoniales, Cladiphorales, Bryopsidales, Chlorocystidales, Klebsormidiales and Ulotrichales.
The Heterokontophyta: Sphacelariales, Dictyotales, Ectocarpales, Ralfsiales, Utleriales, Sporochniales, Tilopteridales, Desmarestiales, Laminariales and the Fucales (Hardy and Guiry, 2006).